Menu

Fireside Chat

President LaForge is joined by Robin Boyles, director of the Office of Institutional Grants at Delta State, to discuss the Levitt Amp Series Grant.

For the second year in a row, Delta State University has been selected as a winner of the Levitt AMP Grant Awards which will be used to produce a 10-week series of concerts. As with last year’s concerts, Delta State and the city of Cleveland will use the grant to bring a wide variety of bands and performances to the community in the form of free, outdoor concerts set in the beautiful green space in downtown Cleveland.

The awarding of this grant for a second year is evidence of Delta State’s growing influence as a center of excellence in music and culture, and the concerts will celebrate the Delta’s rich musical legacy and the historic launch of GRAMMY Museum Mississippi which will open on our campus in March.

The grant provides a $25,000 matching fund, and the Delta Music Institute at Delta State will once again take the lead. The schedule will kick off in the fall season, and dates and artists will be announced at a later date. This grant award is due in part to the tireless work of a number of partners and to all of you who voted in the online contest this past fall to place us among the top. We are one of only 15 communities in the country to receive the grant.

In other news, the Wright Art Center Gallery on campus has opened its first exhibit of 2016 – “Napoleon’s Wallpaper” by Candace Hicks. Hicks is a printmaker and book artist from Texas, and her exhibit treats the gallery as a puzzle box to be solved by the viewer through a combination of prints that reveal secret messages when viewed through special colored glasses, kinetic sculptures that reveal clues, and puzzles that can be manipulated to reveal hidden compartments. The gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Everyone is invited to explore this interesting new exhibit.